“Vernor Vinge's best novel yet.” -Greg Bear, author of Moving Mars Vinge has created a galaxy for the readers of the '90s to believe in.immense, ancient, athrum with data webs, dotted with wonders.” - John Clute, Interzone “A tale that burns with the brazen energy of the best space operas of the golden age. Against a background depicting a space-time continuum stratified into 'zones of thought,' the author has created a rarity-a unique blend of hard science, high drama, and superb storytelling.” - Library Journal Responding to the crippled ship's distress signal, a rescue mission races against time to retrieve the children and recover the weapon they need to prevent the universe from being changed forever. “Fleeing a menace of galactic proportions, a spaceship crashes on an unfamiliar world, leaving the survivors-a pair of children-to the not-so-tender mercies of a medieval, lupine race. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these 'regions of thought,' but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.įleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function.

“Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.” - David Brin

A fire upon the deep series